Dropping In with Duck Foot Brewery

Duck Foot Brewing, located in San Diego, specializes in Gluten-Free beer with an action sports twist. (All photos Matt Duff)

In celebration of #InternationalBeerDay we decided to get the skinny on an emerging action sports-oriented, San Diego-based brewery, Duck Foot, to learn how they got started, why they have a funny name and what’s so special about a beer everyone is talking about. Hence we dropped in with co-founder and “Head Quack” Matt DelVecchio who waddled off a few creative answers to our fairly flat-footed questions.

What’s Duck Foot brewing?
We consider it stoke in a bottle. We branded the beer after the stance my snowboard bindings are set in knowing the Surf, Skate and Snow community would dig a solid, hand-crafted beer made from a stokaholic. We are craft beer first but we back it up with good vibes and an awesome brand, but top it off with a “no beer drinker left behind” attitude. All of our beers are safe to consume from your “craft lover” to your “celiac gluten-avoiding beer drinker”.

When was the brand founded and how is it different than other brewers/beers?
We started brewing beer for public consumption in 2015, but we started the business plan in 2011, so in a way I feel like I have been in the industry for years but, in reality, people other than my neighbors are just trying the beer for the first time. For the last couple years, my neighbors were able to take advantage of a lot of recipe development. Made for a lot of good times.

What is it about the surfing and San Diego culture that’s aligned with beer?
There is nothing better than going for a surf then hitting the skatepark and coming home and having a few beers. The reward is worth it and it’s also how you keep off the lbs as you get older. Who wants to go to the gym, anyway?

Is there any fatigue against new micro brews in the marketplace, i.e. – not another one?!?!
If there is, I haven’t seen it. I know it’s hard for people to keep up but if you make good beer, as far as I am concerned, the more the merrier.

When I think beer and action sports I think Saint Archer – is Duck Foot similar?
I am super stoked about Saint Archer. I love those guys and I am stoked for their success. It’s truly amazing. I want nothing more than all those pros that invested in that company to do well. I would say we are similar in the sense that both our brands embody the Surf, Skate and Snow lifestyle and we both also make great beer. The difference as far as those sports go, I do all of them, but I bust my ass a lot more than they do 🙂 You should see the size of my left hip right now. I think I have fallen on it 10 times in the last 2 weeks learning how to carve on transitions.

Making beer during a drought – how hard is that? Any PR blowback?
We spent a ton of time developing a brewery design that would recapture as much water as we could so our environmental impact is super low. I really want those almond farmers to continue to use as much water as possible!

What’s the biggest challenge launching a beer brand in 2015?
Duck Foot’s biggest challenge is getting people to realize that although people keep talking about the gluten thing (or the lack thereof) that our beers are actually awesome and don’t taste any different then gluten heavy beers.

Gluten free beer? Seems like an oxymoron – how does it work?
So our beers are made with all the same ingredients that any other brewery uses: barley, wheat, rye, etc. (all those are heavy in the gluten). Except what separates us is that we add this natural enzyme that breaks down the gluten protein rendering it undetectable to people…. even people with celiac disease, which I have, so it’s kind of a big deal to me. But what’s really the amazing thing is to see all the people with celiac or auto-immune issues that are able to drink our beers for the first time, in sometimes 15+ years! Then the other awesome thing is to see people come in and try the beers who don’t know about that aspect of our beer and be blown away about just how good the beer tastes and that there really is zero taste difference (see Chris Farley in the hidden camera Colombian Crystal coffee commercial skit). We actually just won two silver medals this past week At The Central California Craft Beer Competition. Winning!

Is this beer best drank out of the bottle or a glass?
I prefer a mason jar but maybe when we start bottling this fall that will be cool, too.

What’s the plan for global domination?
Yeah man we are super stoked on global domination. We are more focused on intergalactic domination at this time. Global seems a little low for our personal growth goals but everyone has different ambition. Elon Musk just joined our board so I don’t mean to leak this out early but I am super stoked that Space X will be the first to deliver Duck Foot Beer to the extraterrestrial accounts that are anxiously awaiting our tasty suds.

To stay up on all things Duck Foot follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and visit their website, www.duckfootbeer.com